Sunday, May 17, 2015 – Admitting Mistakes
We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them. ~ Lillian Hellman
America is a mistake, a giant mistake. ~ Sigmund Freud
You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. ~ Sam Levenson
To err is human; to forgive, infrequent. ~ Franklin P. Adams
It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something. ~ Ornette Coleman
Do not fear mistakes. There are none. ~ Miles Davis
I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes. ~ Jimi Hendrix
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~ Scott Adams
I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones. ~ John Peel
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. ~ Niels Bohr
The essence of success is that it is never necessary to think of a new idea oneself. It is far better to wait until somebody else does it, and then to copy him in every detail, except his mistakes. ~ Aubrey Menen
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. ~ James Joyce
We made too many wrong mistakes. ~ Yogi Berra
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. ~ Oscar Wilde
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. ~ Franklin P. Jones
Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts. ~ Jim Morrison
When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, “Did you sleep good?” I said “No, I made a few mistakes.” ~ Steven Wright
Harvard makes mistakes too, you know. Kissinger taught there. ~ Woody Allen
He was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be – a student of history; and like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones. ~ A. J. P. Taylor
The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest. ~ Clifton Fadiman
Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them. ~ Peter Ustinov
Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them. ~ Salvador Dalí
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. ~ Gene Roddenberry
Woman was God’s second mistake. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ~ George Bernard Shaw
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
We’re all proud of making little mistakes. It gives us the feeling we don’t make any big ones. ~ Andy Rooney
A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she’s a tramp. ~ Joan Rivers
If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner. ~ Tallulah Bankhead
When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering. ~ W. Edwards Deming
All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner. ~ Red Skelton
I don’t make mistakes. I make prophecies which immediately turn out to be wrong. ~ Murray Walker
We love it when we make mistakes that are better than something you could think up. ~ Wayne Coyne
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality. ~ Mason Cooley
The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style. ~ Fred Astaire
One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it. ~ Galen Rowell
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
As for all those mistakes I make – they are on purpose – to teach you how to deal with them. ~ Donald Norman
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet. ~ Scott Adams
It’s absolutely stupid that we live without an ozone layer. We have men, we’ve got rockets, we’ve got saran wrap. Fix it! ~ Lewis Black
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~ W. Edwards Deming
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one. ~ William H. Seward
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~ William Blake
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. ~ Rita Mae Brown
A clever man commits no minor blunders. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If there’s a God I wonder if he’s sitting in the dark on the end of his bed wondering how he managed to screw everything up. ~ Michel Grant
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The mistakes we regret the most are the ones we were too scared to make. ~ Ollie Slaney
The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. ~ Peter Drucker
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft
People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They’re wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster. ~ Adam Osborne
My life is full of mistakes. They’re like pebbles that make a good road. ~ Beatrice Wood
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be. ~ Walter Bagehot
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. ~ Paul Valery
Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. ~ Carl Sandburg
He that speaks much is much mistaken. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Lack of pep is often mistaken for patience. ~ Kin Hubbard
I’ll never be mistaken for Pat Boone. ~ Sal Mineo
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. ~ Jane Austen
When two people are really happy about one another, one can generally assume that they are mistaken. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities. ~ David Hume
The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness; and the old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. ~ Bertrand Russell
Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference. ~ Iris Murdoch
Everyone goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest. ~ Voltaire
Just Above Sunset 